ILoveMyCamera.com! Israel -- the holy land Israel is a great place to visit.  The history there just never quits.  From the time Abraham came to the land God would show him, and Moses led the people into the promised land, and King David reigned in Jerusalem, and Jesus walked the earth -- history has been in the making there. Unfortunately, the country is a bit less safe to travel than it was a few years ago due to the religious and ethnic tensions there.  Nonetheless, if you get a chance to visit, it is entirely worth it. When I was there, I had a Canon F1 35mm film camera.  I took lots of B&W, and color film, also lots of slides. "Dome of the Rock"   This is the temple mount site in Jerusalem where Solomon built the temple 900 years before the birth of Christ.  Tradition has it that this is the spot where Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord. The building now standing there is an Islamic shrine, and one of the holiest sites to Muslims.  This is the site where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven on his horse.   I scanned this photo from a film slide taken with my F1 and corrected it a bit in Photoshop for some yellow bias (could be the age of the film? )   The market in the old city of Jerusalem is fascinating.  In many ways it hasn't changed in hundreds of years.  Here you can still bargain with street vendors over the price of what you want to buy.  If you think the price is still too high, just start to walk away.  Sometimes they will follow running after you offering a final low price.  "For you, a good deal."  That is what I heard more than once.  This shot was scanned from a slightly over-exposed 35mm slide.  I tried to correct a bit in Paint Shop Pro, but still lost some of the details.  Hopefully you can still get a feel for the street scene there. To scan, I used my Epson Perfection 4180 Photo scanner.  It does a nice job and even separates the slides into different images for you if you scan multiple slides at a time.     "Street Scene   in Old Jerusalem"       "Sunset over the Mount of Olives" This is a magnificent sunset taken from Bethany, just east of Jerusalem.  The sun is setting over the Mount of Olives.  We were coming back from a long day of sightseeing.  When I noticed the sky, I made them stop the bus so I could take this picture.  Glad I did now. This was also scanned from a 35 mm color slide.      "Valley of Armageddon" This shot is taken above the valley of Armageddon, framed by a rock wall and some thistles.  Armageddon is the Greek word for "Hill of Megiddo."  The Bible says that this is where the kings of the earth will be gathered together at the end of the world.  This valley has always been a strategic place in history, because it is a choke point in the land bridge between Africa and Asia.  It is a 14 by 20 mile plot of land Napoleon appraised as an ideal battleground, saying "all the armies of the world could maneuver their forces on this vast plain." Today, however, it is a quite fertile valley useful for growing crops.  You can see the crop patterns in the top center of the picture (in the valley). Again this shot is scanned from a 35 mm slide and I had to color correct for age in Paint Shop Pro.  "American Institute on Mt. Zion" This is the center garden area in a school I attended one summer in Jerusalem.  It was called the American Institute for Holy Land Studies at that time, but I think it has since been renamed.  It is located on the "new" Mt. Zion just west of the old city of David and temple mount.  Just below it lies the valley of Gehenna that Jesus compared to hell in the New Testament.  The valley is a nice place today -- full of grass.  I had expected it to look like it did a long time ago when Jesus lived (burning trash), but they have long since cleaned it up.